Field

Early modern and modern Japan, Colonialism, Critical Theory, Marxian Theory of History

Research Interests

Katsuya Hirano’s teaching and research explore the intersection between history and critical theory with a focus on questions of ideology, political economy, and subject/subjectivity. His first book, The Politics of Dialogic Imagination: Power and Popular Culture in Early Modern Japan, (Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 2013) outlines a general theory of the transformation in modes of subject-formation from the Tokugawa regime (1603-1868) to Japan’s first modern state, the early Meiji government, through an analysis centered on the regulation of popular culture. His current book project examines, through the prism of biopolitics, the correlative operations of capitalism and racism in the making of the Japanese empire. Taking the colonization of the Ainu people as the locus of analysis, the project explores the relation between the state’s drive for primitive accumulation (deterritorialization and reterritorialization of Ainu lands) and the construction and implementation of racial categories through academic (linguistic, economic, and anthropological) and legal discourse. The project ultimately seeks to deepen our understanding of the history of Ainu experiences through the perspectives of global histories of empire, capitalism, and colonialism. Hirano is also co-editing a translation volume with Professor Gavin Walker, entitled The Archive of Revolution: Marxist Historiography in Modern Japan. This volume will be the first major introduction of the rich yet long neglected Japanese Marxist historiography that played the decisive role in the formation of critical social science in modern Japan from the late 1920s to the 1970s.

Hirano received BA in political theory from Dōshisha University (Japan), MA in cultural studies/international studies from the University of Birmingham (UK), and Ph.D in history from the University of Chicago. He was a member of history department at Cornell University before joining UCLA in 2013.

Selected Publications

Books

The Politics of Dialogic Imagination: Power and Popular Culture in Early Modern Japan (Chicago: U of Chicago Press, Chicago Studies in Practices of Meaning series, 2013)

Book manuscript in progress: 『「他者の到来」の歴史（学）―“アイヌ”とポストコロニアル的考察』（仮題） (Toward the History of The Coming of the Other: On the “Ainu” and Postcolonial Reflections) (Under Contract with Hōsei University Press, Tokyo).

Journal article: “江戸の遊びと権力” (On Play and Power in Late Tokugawa Edo) in みすず no.565 (Misuzu) (Tokyo: みすず書房, 2008)

Book chapter: “編訳者あとがき ― 現代の苦境を切り開く過去との対話” (Afterword: Dialogue with the Past to Live through the Predicament of Modernity) in Doing 思想史 (Doing Intellectual History) (Tokyo: みすず書房、2008)

Book chapter: “Social Networks and Production of Public Discourse in Edo Popular Culture” in Elizabeth Lillehoj (ed.) Acquisition: Art and Ownership in Edo-Period Japan (New York: Floating World Edition, 2007)

Alongside our existing 12 sub-fields, the History Department supports a number of cross-field clusters. The clusters are intended to attract students and faculty to important themes and current in the historical discipline. The clusters will offer new courses, sponsor outside speakers, and convene Department-based workshops and seminars.